Another turn-based RPG with a couple twists, good and bad.
Pros:
-Good turned based action mixed with a tactics grid (mixes your developed consistent human characters with your ever unique and changing demons to fight with.)
-(You move on a grid and can attack from all for sides and farther if you get a demon with a certain special ability.)
-Great sci-fi story with several different endings
-An unforgiving and very hard final boss but it makes you feel EXTREMELY accomplished once you defeat it
-Some very cool and memorable characters (my opinion)
-Gameplay is challenging and fulfilling
-Overall good for the DS
Cons:
-A lot of grinding to defeat certain bosses
-Can be a little too challenging and makes you very frustrated
-Some very ANNOYING characters that are too important and stupid (my opinion)
-Things to make the gameplay better that I felt should have been implemented such as items, and possibly special attacks or something
-Final boss (at least the one I faced) is VERY HARD
-Very few ways to increase mp which becomes annoying and game ruining
-Can be considered repetitive gameplay by many
-Demons level up slow and you have to constantly get new ones for your party
-Fusing demons can be frustrating when you have leveled up to lower level demons to high levels and when they fuse you get a weak demon (explained more)
*(This game is good but for people not so good with very challenging, turn-based gameplay, and for people not too into RPG's like this it won't be good.)
The gameplay is hard to describe but the best way for you to know is to see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC8h7Tq4A2c (this is not my video)
This is a quick video showing the gameplay of it quite late in the game (About 65% through I am guessing) You can have up to four human characters selected to play and each one can control up to two demons. You get demons from the Demon Auction where you can buy them or you can make new demons that could be stronger. The new fused demon gains previous abilities from the two other demons which you can select. However this doesn't come with its faults. Demons all start at different levels (a level 24 demon can only be obtained at level 24 or higher) and if you end up liking a certain demon it is hard to keep them because your main characters level up a lot faster than demons and so you end up needing to get new demons constantly which can be hectic, annoying and disappointing. Also when you have leveled up some demons quite high but you just need to say goodbye and you want to fuse them they will end up fusing a demon even lower than the level they are now, making those leveled up demons almost useless.
That is the best way I can tell you the gameplay but the bad part about the gameplay is the difficulty. If you like gameplay to be challenging and hard then you will like this and if you hate that then you won't like this. Trust me it is an ATLUS game and it is HARD.
One thing connected to it being hard is that magic ends up being extremely useful yet you only have a certain amount of mp and unless you have a demon that has an ability to recover it once you use it it's gone. So it makes you feel like there really should have been more abilities or items in the game to help with the. The only way to heal yourself (well almost only) is to use magic but once you are out there is no way. So I ask why can't they have some sort of Potion for health or Elixir to restore mp. Well they don't which can be irritating.
By acting a certain way with characters and choosing to cope with certain characters it changes the outcome of the ending. This is a good thing. Also some characters are cool(Atsuro and Naoyo) but some are annoying (mainly the females)...(not sexist I swear!). Also the story just seems awesome to me (similar to The World Ends With You story) and it made me come back for more even though I had to go through the hardships of some of the parts in this game.
Well i digress. This game ends up still being above average(5/10) and ends up being good for it's RPG elements and good story. Unforgiving and hard it may be but it is worth it in the end.